Have faith
One has to wonder where Jim Adams (Letters, December 27) has been not to be aware of the tragic consequences of the adoption of atheism by societies and the attendant collapse into immorality and lawlessness.
It has to be admitted that atrocities have been committed in the past (and even today) in the name of some religions (even by so-called Christians) but the overall outcome has been positive for humanity - especially that of Christianity with its power to change lives for good.
Compare this with atheism which leads to disintegrating societies and the inevitable rise of totalitarian regimes such as those of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Ze Dong and Kim Jong-Un, and the death and suffering of hundreds of millions of people; not the idyllic picture Jim envisages.
We need to recognise that because of man's fallen state atheistic, humanistic socialism can never be the answer; only a life-changing personal faith in Jesus Christ is.
"For by grace are ye saved through faith (in Jesus Christ) ... not of works lest any man should boast" Ephesians 2:8-9.
DAVID PREEST
Rotorua
Sun enlightenment
The media talks about planets like the earth: it doesn't talk about stars like our sun, because the experts have discovered, to their dismay, that there simply aren't any.
Incredibly, of all the multitudes of stars that have been studied, none resemble the sun. The sun has a lot of broad-spectrum light. It has low X-Rays, low ultra-violet, low infra-red, it has very low sunspot activity, it hardly has any large solar flare activity: in fact it has never had a major solar flare in all its existence (if it had, we'd not be here, nor would the atmosphere).
The sun doesn't have another twin star close by, the sun has a lot more lithium than any other known star, the sun is a very big star, at the 99th percentile in fact. The sun's power output is unusually stable. In fact there is no other known power source as stable: Its energy output has no discernible variation at all. Most stars are red dwarves, highly unstable and very cool. Of the other stars, most are in orbiting pairs or larger groups. The remainder are much, much larger than the sun, while an infinitesimally small remaining few are similar in size to the sun and not in a pair: these stars are all incredibly violent flare stars.
Recently, academics have suggested that maybe there are billions of other universes out there somewhere, because this would explain the impossible uniqueness of our sun.
Other academics, for similar reasons, claim we are merely a Floating Brain in space, imagining it all. We saw this in Guardians of the Galaxy 2, where Star Lord's dad was a Floating Brain.
The Bible, as we know, tells us "And God made the great light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night. He made the stars also." Knowing how implausible our sun is, the Bible's explanation is a good one.
GJ PHILIP
Rotorua
